Hyperlinks that work even if I move documents to separate folders.

[Guest]

Is it possible to create a hyperlink between two documents that will still
work if I move both documents to new locations in separate folders? I am
using Word 2003 on XP.
I thought I was once able to do it in Word 97 . I recall a check box option
'link to relative path'

I did read something about hyperlink base but it was not clear what it does.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

No. Hyperlinks break when you move files. That's a fact of life.

Web programs such as Dreamweaver, maybe FrontPage, have sophisticated
tools that will update your hyperlinks for you when you tell the program
that you moved files. But Word doesn't.

If you use relative links that only depend on the documents being within
the same folder or set of nested folders, you can move the biggest
folder around and still be fine.

You can read more about Hyperlinks and FilePaths and Word here--it
explains the situation and offers a couple workarounds:
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/tblsfldsfms/includetextfieldscontent.htm#FilePaths

 

[Guest]

I'd like to believe that by using relative links, you can make a folder able
to be moved to any location and still have all the hyperlinks between two
documents in that folder, always continue to work. That's how web pages
work; if you set your WYSIWYG HTML tool to use relative paths, the whole
website always works as long as it is all contained in one primary folder.

But so far, I've read a bunch of advice in these forums and read several
links including the one shown in Daiya's post, and I've tried setting a
hyperlink base in two test word.docs in a test folder, but the fact that I
specify a hyperlink base does not change the way Word codes any hyperlink in
the 'create hyperlink' dialog...it still creates a hyperlink all the way back
to my hard drive and hard-codes the entire path into the link. And, if I
remove that portion of the hyperlink, leaving only the relative link, the
hyperlink is always broken.

IMHO, This is a regrettable state of affairs, actually...since the entire
earth's population is using MS Word, and almost everyone who uses hyperlinks
needs portable hyperlinks, there ought to be a way to enable the millions of
users in Word-land to make durable hyperlinks that won't break when they move
folders around. And, it seems like that procedure ought to be easily and
fully explained, stepwise, somewhere, with some clear, simple examples - but,
so far, i haven't found that, anywhere.